The Nation­al Cen­ter on Les­bian Rights points to a civil rights suit 77-year-old Clay Greene has filed again­st Sono­ma Coun­ty, Cal­i­for­nia. Accord­ing to the suit, when Harold, Greene’s part­ner of 20 years, fell ill, the coun­ty refused to let Greene vis­it him in the hos­pi­tal, despite the couple’s metic­u­lous efforts to name one anoth­er in their wills, pow­ers of attor­ney, and med­ical direc­tive doc­u­ments. The coun­ty then went to court to argue that the local gov­ern­ment should be given con­trol of Harold’s finances, which for 20 years had also been Greene’s. (The coun­ty referred to Greene as a “room­mate.”)

Despite an unfa­vor­able rul­ing, the coun­ty appar­ent­ly auc­tioned off the couple’s assets any­way. Accord­ing to the law­suit, the coun­ty then ter­mi­nat­ed the couple’s lease, removed Greene from his home, and con­fined him to a nurs­ing home again­st his will. Greene’s part­ner died three months lat­er. The two weren’t allowed to meet dur­ing that three months. Greene has since been released from the nurs­ing home, but says he has noth­ing left. The coun­ty took every­thing he has.

This of course is only one half of a law­suit. But unless the claims that Greene and his part­ner had all their legal work in order are false—and that seems like some­thing that would be too easy to prove for Greene’s attor­ney to have exaggerated—Sonoma County’s actions here are unspeak­ably cru­el.

The county’s treat­ment of Greene and his part­ner is being por­trayed in the blo­gos­phere as anti-gay big­otry, and that may well be true. But it also may be just anoth­er exam­ple of gov­ern­ment abus­ing the elder­ly to get its hands on their stuff.

I don’t think it’s nec­es­sar­i­ly one or the oth­er. Anti-gay big­otry may well have helped the gov­ern­ment decide who exact­ly to attack, in much the same way that cops have his­tor­i­cal­ly pre­ferred to per­se­cute peo­ple with brown skin.

It was a lit­tle before 8 at night when the break­er went out at Emi­ly Milburn’s home in Galve­ston. She was busy prepar­ing her chil­dren for school the next day, so she asked her 12-year-old daugh­ter, Dymond, to pop out­side and turn the switch back on.

As Dymond head­ed toward the break­er, a blue van drove up and three men jumped out rush­ing toward her. One of them grabbed her say­ing, “You’re a pros­ti­tute. You’re com­ing with me.”

Dymond grabbed onto a tree and start­ed scream­ing, “Dad­dy, Dad­dy, Dad­dy.” One of the men cov­ered her mouth. Two of the men beat her about the face and throat.

As it turned out, the three men were plain-clothed Galve­ston police offi­cers who had been called to the area regard­ing three white pros­ti­tutes solic­it­ing a white man and a black drug deal­er.

All this is accord­ing to a law­suit filed in Galve­ston fed­er­al court by Mil­burn again­st the offi­cers. The law­suit alleges that the offi­cers thought Dymond, an African-American, was a hook­er due to the “tight shorts” she was wear­ing, despite not fit­ting the racial descrip­tion of any of the female sus­pects. The police went to the wrong house, two blocks away from the area of the report­ed ille­gal activ­i­ty…

So you’d think that after the police fig­ured out they had the wrong house, they’d apol­o­gize, and pos­si­bly even com­pen­sate the girl and her fam­i­ly. Accord­ing to the law­suit, you’d be wrong:

After the inci­dent, Dymond was hos­pi­tal­ized and suf­fered black eyes as well as throat and ear drum injuries.

Three weeks lat­er, accord­ing to the law­suit, police went to Dymond’s school, where she was an hon­or stu­dent, and arrest­ed her for assault­ing a pub­lic ser­vant. Griffin says the alle­ga­tions stem from when Dymond fought back again­st the three men who were try­ing to take her from her home. The case went to tri­al, but the judge declared it a mis­tri­al on the first day, says Griffin. The new tri­al is set for Feb­ru­ary.

I have a call into the Galve­ston dis­trict attor­ney and with Dymond Milburn’s lawyer. We’re going on a press account of one side of a law­suit, here. So it’s possible—and I would hope—that there are some impor­tant details miss­ing.

Oth­er­wise, a police mis­take leads to an inno­cent 12-year-old get­ting vio­lent­ly snatched up and roughed up by a group of plain­clothes cops jump­ing out of a van … and they charge her for resist­ing?

A com­ment on this post linked to a court doc­u­ment that iden­ti­fies the kid­nap­ping scum­bags as Sergeant Gilbert Gomez (badge #987), Offi­cers David Roark (badge #332), Justin Popovich (badge #336), and Sean Stew­art (badge #392). Nat­u­ral­ly there have been, and will be, no offi­cial action tak­en again­st the­se cop­scum, because what they did is the epit­o­me of good police work in the Evil Empire. How­ev­er, since their iden­ti­ties are known, I hold out hope that all four of them will mys­te­ri­ous­ly get shot in the head at some point.